


This is Home

by Duskmoon



Category: Subnautica (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fish, Illnesses, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Social Anxiety, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Stalker!AU, because i’m terrified of uploading my works, inconsistent updates, no beta we die like men, this is so self-indulgent oh my god
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 11:23:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19991350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duskmoon/pseuds/Duskmoon
Summary: Ryley Robinson thought he would die when he found out he had a supposedly incurable disease that’s killed a few hundred billion already.Turns out he was wrong.——My stalker!AU because I need to put my ideas somewhere!(the title may change because I couldn’t think of anything at the time and cavetown is good)





	This is Home

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for giving this a chance!! I’ve had this idea floating around for a while. I finally decided to post this!
> 
> Now I’m not the most experienced writer, or the best, and my pacing is terrible, but I’ll try to improve as I update! I’m always open to constructive criticism!
> 
> With that said and out of the way, enjoy! ✨

Ryley’s head was pounding. It was unlike anything he’d felt before— stabbing with constant thrums of pain. The heat was unbearable. He could feel the sweat dripping off of his face. Opening his eyes, everything came off as blurry. When he realized he couldn’t bring his arms to cover his face, he snapped out of it.

There was a fire. A fire blazing hot right beside him, inching ever so slightly closer, and he was still strapped into the seat. Panicked, he hit the button to release himself from his seat, becoming even more frantic when it didn’t work. Slamming it even harder, he stumbled it and to his feet when he was released.

He quickly put it out with the fire extinguisher, coughing and trying to wave away the smoke.

“You have suffered minor head trauma. This is considered an optimal outcome.” His PDA droned. Ryley chose to ignore it. He knew what had happened; he didn’t need the Alterra assigned AI telling him again. He gave a harsh sigh and rubbed at his temples. 

Deciding that his lungs needed a break from all of this smoke, he climbed up the ladder, opting to not acknowledge that he was shaking like crazy. Pushing open the top hatch, he pulled himself up onto the roof of his lifepod. He couldn’t suppress the gasp that escaped him.

There was ocean. All around him. No land in sight. The Aurora was smoking, lying broken in the water like a discarded toy. Tears slipped down Ryley’s face. 

How many others survived?

——

The crash was two months ago. Ryley had built himself a base a few hundred meters from his lifepod, not wanting to leave the comfort of the safe shallows.

In that time he had also gotten himself tools, a seamoth, found a strange facility (that for some reason already had its barrier disabled. strange.) He found the old Degasi bases, but didn’t find any PDAs. 

Recently though, he’s been feeling more achy. Of course the Kharaa would be most of that cause, but suddenly his divesuits felt too tight. 

Pains aside, Ryley has recently been searching around for more survivors. He hadn’t been able to search far beforehand, but now that he had the second depth module, he could look around even more. 

He felt his stomach drop. He had to go and search around near that strange island, where the Sunbeam had recently crashed. He hadn’t been there when it happened, but he felt the shockwaves and saw the debris. He felt incredibly guilty. 

Ryley pulled on his rebreather and hoisted himself into his seamoth, passing one of the many kelp forests as he went. The stalkers that lived there were adorable– in his opinion– and so he found himself spending a lot of time with them. For some reason, they would bring him pieces of scrap metal and, on occasion, a peeper. They clicked and growled at him, but not in an aggressive way, Ryley could tell. They bumped against him in a show of affection, from what he could gather.

Shaking free of that string of particular thoughts, he pressed onwards, fighting off the bad feeling in his gut. He could tell when he neared the island from the rising seafloor and the distant telltale roar of the reaper that lived near here. Taking a deep breath, he eased deeper downwards. 

The wreckage was everywhere. It was like the Aurora all over again. He fought back a gag when he watched a boneshark carry away a blackened figure suspiciously shaped human. 

There— a glint of metal in the headlights of his seamoth. It was charred too, but it was a much bigger chunk, presumably a lifepod. Ryley’s eyes widened and his hoped climbed as he got nearer, but slumped back into his seat with a disappointed sigh. Abandoned. Go figure. 

Time had passed faster than he thought it did. The already dark waters were quickly becoming pitch black, with not even the headlights able to cut through the darkness. He returned home and slumped into a chair, water bottle in hand. Being constantly tired was tough on him; especially when he took long expeditions to places like the blood kelp. Crabsquids freaked him out. 

As soon as he drank the last of his water, he gingerly climbed into bed, being mindful of his sore spots. Luckily he hadn’t gotten too many of the green blisters the Kharaa was supposed to cause, so he counted that as a win. 

——

Ryley woke up in a cold sweat. He was choking, couldn’t breathe, kicking his covers off and falling to the ground with a gasp of pure pain. His entire spine ached, his head felt like it was splitting open. He clutched at his face and writhed. 

The water– the water was calling him, and for once the refreshing feel of the ocean sounded nice. He didn’t bother with putting on his flippers or headgear. His head was filled with fog as he yanked the hatch open, launching out into the water.

He was met with pack of three stalkers, crooning at him curiously. Ryley shuddered as the pain began to fade, staring at his hands, letting out a shocked screech. 

His hands were clawed at the fingertips, and webbed. Running them over his face, he felt two hard fins on either side of his head. He focused on moving them, intrigued by the way they moved up and down, outwards and inwards. They felt so... expressive. His teeth were different too. Two sharp fangs jutted out from his mouth, one from the top and one from the bottom, jagged like a stalker’s.

The next thing he noticed were the fins like the ones on the sides of his head running down the length of his back and, even more surprisingly, tail? Oh, that’s new. 

Ryley struggled to flick it, unknowing of how it works. It felt like trying to bend just one of his toes; he knows its there and he knows he can move it, he just doesn’t know how. 

And speaking of toes; his legs looked vastly different. Curved like a wild animal’s, and now he only had four clawed toes, also webbed like his fingers. 

He almost didn’t notice, but his neck felt wrong. Different. Gently running his new, sharp fingers over them, he felt soft gills fluttering open and closed, filtering water unconsciously. Ryley had to struggle not to panic so it wouldn’t stop.

It all felt so natural, which was likely the weirdest part. The stalkers in front of him seemed oddly content with him. One that he hadn’t notice left came back with a piece of scrap metal, dropping it into his hands. 

Ryley had never known what stalkers found so interesting about the scrap from the Aurora, and just metal in general. Now though, he understood. The metal looked so enticing in the light. It reflected the shine of the two moons and the thousands of bright stars in the sky, seemingly shifting colors in the water, capturing his attention with ease. He could smell faint traces of smoke around the charred spots of it, and the much more prominent tang of titanium alongside a few other metals. The texture of it, shifting from rough to smooth in spaced out intervals, had him running his hands over it again and again. The coolness of its surface against his strangely hot palms felt very nice. His mouth ached with want, so he gave in.

Ryley chomped down onto the scrap metal without a second of hesitation. 

No regrets.

His teeth hurt only the slightest bit as they sunk into the the hunk of titanium. No wonder he can use stalker teeth for reinforced glass. They cut through like a hot knife to butter. He tenderly let go of it, gnawing on a charred spot. It tasted strange, to say the least, but overall not unpleasant. The flavor was salty and smoky on his tongue. He quite enjoyed the feeling of his new sharp and, admittedly strange feeling fangs sinking into the scrap metal. 

Dropping the scrap when he was done with it, Ryley realized that he felt wide awake, but oh so tired at the same time. A stalker’s tendency to be nocturnal was really messing with his head. He decided staying up wouldn’t be worth it, and moved to go back inside. The stalkers before him had other plans, though.

The smallest moved behind him and nudged him towards the kelp forest. The largest one, whom he’d seen around before, led the way while the other one followed. Curious, Ryley followed too.

They led him to the kelp forest closest to his base, trailing through one of the many winding caves. He ran his hands along the rocky, ridged walls. The bumpy texture was fun to run his strangely sensitive hands over. When the stalkers finally stopped swimming, he saw what they had been leading him to.

It was a nest made out of the soft kelp that was all around them. The material itself didn’t look particularly new, which meant that they built this for him a while ago, and had been waiting for him to follow them. Eager to test how sleeping in the water felt, he curled up, releasing a few rough, contented growls that he has no idea how he made. How come a nest of alien kelp felt better than an Alterra constructed bed? 

The soothing sound of the water currents and soft clicking of nearby creatures was enough to lull Ryley to sleep in his comfortable swath of plants, more content than he’d ever been in the past two months.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! Like I said, I’m always open for constructive criticism, as I’m always trying to improve!
> 
> I hope you all have a wonderful day/night! ✨✨


End file.
